I have heard this was completely and totally staged with lighting, tripods and so on.
Funny, when I heard about this. I am from Boston, and when I got home after the game, another Freeper had sent me a link to live camera feeds of the riot. I did not get to bed until after 0200. I literally could not stop watching. It was mostly anger inducing and disturbing (occasionally interesting and even funny, dumb ass falling into burning car, numb nuts guy hit in the testicles with some kind of exploding crowd control thingie) but I saw a lot more that disturbed me.
But in light of this, there was one thing I saw off to the side, and since there was no rewind, I thought my eyes were deceiving me, or I must have misinterpreted it.
At one point, there was a burning car with a bunch of the usual idiots, and off to the side I saw a man and woman walk near the fire, and something in their attitude or posture made me think they were going to have sex right there. I can’t put my finger on it, but the way they slowed down walking, looked around slyly, stopped and pressed their bodies against each other brought sex immediately to mind. I only saw it for a second or two, and my eyes went right to it, but they disappeared behind a concrete thing and the video camera was panning.
I wonder if they were just doing this stuff in different scenes, trying to find the right one?
>I have heard this was completely and totally staged with lighting, tripods and so on.<
It is so perfect that I would not be surprised. As I looked at the picture I thought it could be a still from a movie. The picture is just too good in too many ways. It evokes an emotional response which is, for me, a major component of a great picture. Actually, several emotional responses. It also forces me to study the picture. Another quality of a great shot.
And no, I don’t mean studying her butt.
I found the same thing happened to me. I didn't get to bed until after 0300. I couldn't stop watching it, I even tried to figure out what the attraction was during it (as I saw the clock on my computer getting later and later). I came up with two basic answers:
1. Was interested in seeing what the police would actually do. Interested in their approach and strategy. I was totally dependent on the one feed in saw in a thread (I think it was CTV) and what they showed "live" and on tape, but my assessment was that they waited far too long to make their moves to end the rioting (far too much damage was allowed to occur and potentially dangerous circumstances were allowed to exist too long). JMO. The CTV live feed went down just as the police were attempting to force the one of the larger crowds to disperse (South?) by closing off 3 other directions. I actually don't know how that tactic ended up playing out.
2. Was interested in seeing how the crowd of rioters (and what their composition was) would behave and what type of tactics they were using. It seemed to me that there was a core group of instigators (probably self-styled "anarchists") that cleverly made use of a large crowd of disappointed, inebriated people that were already out on the streets for many hours. From what I saw these instigators (that had absolutely no interest in the actual hockey game) were the ones that would start the trouble in various locations (e.g., breaking windows, looting, torching cars/garbage) and let the main crowd either join in actively or just cheer them on. I suspect that they succeeded in getting some number of the other drunken spectators to follow in a monkey see-monkey do manner.
I also realized that if I didn't think that there is a fair chance of that type of public rioting coming to the US soon, I probably wouldn't have bothered watching so long. (At my age getting less than 4 hours of sleep really gives me that "drag @ss" feeling all day!) I also figured that culturally those folks in urban Western CA were probably a good example of what we will see here (except of course in the US we can expect to see a more "diverse" group of rioters).
(If you've thought about it, I'd be interested in your assessment of why you found yourself glued to the live feed for so long.)